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C M Y K Nxxx,2009-05-01,C,025,Bs-4C,E1 N C25 FRIDAY, MAY 1, 2009 Roosevelt And the Jews: A Debate Rekindled By PATRICIA COHEN RANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT’S legacy has been slid back under the mi- croscope recently as his ef- forts to pull the country out Fof the Great Depression are scruti- nized. Now a piece of his foreign pol- icy is also being re-evaluated in a soon-to-be published book that up- ends a widely held view that he was indifferent to the fate of Europe’s Jews, and asserts that new evidence shows that the president pushed for an ambitious secret rescue plan be- fore the war began. The book, an edited collection of of- ficial documents, diaries, internal memos and more, contends that Roosevelt hatched a scheme in 1938 to rally the world’s democracies and relocate millions of European Jews in undeveloped areas in Latin America and Africa. “It is a book that will change the consensus about the role of Presi- dent Roosevelt,” said Deborah Lip- stadt, a leading expert on the Holo- caust, who has read some sections. It “compels historians — both those who have vilified F.D.R. and those who have sanctified him — to rethink their conclusions.” The book, “Refugees and Rescue: The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald, 1935-1945,” will undoubt- FRED R. CONRAD/THE NEW YORK TIMES edly reignite the charged debate over whether Roosevelt could have done more to rescue millions of Jews, Gyp- sies, gay people, dissidents and oth- ers who died in Nazi death camps. To Humble Fabric Takes Center Stage his detractors, the refusal in June 1939 to take in any of the more than Felt is the feel-good fabric of all time. Sturdy, cos- show’s half dozen 19th- and early 20th-century pre- 900 Jews aboard the ocean liner St. seting, beautiful, shape-shifting, dye-friendly, it Fashioning Felt, at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, includes Janice Arnold’s “Palace Yurt,” cursors to contemporary felt is a Mongolian tea cere- Louis who were seeking a haven af- serves many purposes and offers countless pleas- mony rug whose salmon-pink field is dotted with pin- above, composed of white-on-white wall hangings. ter Germany’s deadly Kristallnacht ures. Some but certainly not all of its latest uses are wheels of circles in red, green and white pinwheel is much more emblematic of the outlined in “Fashioning Felt,” an illumi- (tie-dyed), and an Iranian carpet whose familiar Per- United States’ response. Many of ROBERTA nating exhibition of around 70 items — sian patterns, freed from the loom, have a wonderful those passengers ultimately died. gredients were and remain animal wool, soap and mostly furnishings and garments — at the drizzled, drifting effect. In contrast, an Uzbek carpet SMITH water mashed into a kind of pulp (initially by bare This is the second of a three-vol- Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. from the same time magnifies such motifs into big, ume set of Mr. McDonald’s papers Felt’s purely artistic possibilities are also feet), then dried under pressure and made into ev- flat silhouettes. being published by Indiana Universi- ART being explored in scattered shows at New erything from caps to rugs and capes to yurts. REVIEW We probably all have felt-related memories, and ty Press in association with the Unit- York galleries. On the scale of material culture, felt’s elemental maybe even some felt phobia. Mine include poodle ed States Holocaust Memorial Mu- Though you may never have thought much about longevity places it somewhere between wine-making seum. Mr. McDonald was the high felt, there’s a lot more to it than you’d expect. One of (the stomping) and ceramics (the malleable natural skirts, varsity letters, blackboard erasers, pool tables commissioner for refugees for the the first manmade textiles, it requires almost no spe- material rendered useful by drying or baking). Like and the undersides of lamps and heavy ashtrays that League of Nations, the chairman of a cial tools, certainly not a loom. It began to be made the smooth surfaces and glazes of ceramics, felt’s I was told to handle carefully. That felt’s edges were presidential advisory committee on 8,000 years ago, a millennium before the earliest wet-dry process and variety of colors encouraged the all, in essence, selvage — no hems required! — at- Continued on Page 30 forms of weaving. Its fairly unadulterated natural in- human yen for decoration. Among the Cooper-Hewitt Continued on Page 27 Beamed From Tomorrow Escapes, in Its New Home PHILADELPHIA — The jazz and bandleader, but also con- but always existed, coming to H A V E N S 3 3 AMERICAN JOURNEYS 35 musician Sun Ra, ambassador stantly surprising. One minute Earth from outer space, specifi- Miami Beach remains a magnet Buggies and back roads in from the Airy King- he’s playing elevator schmaltz; cally the planet Saturn. Like for the affluent. Amish Indiana. HOLLAND dom World Tomorrow, then he’s making you float on air; many immigrants, he was self-in- creator of Enterplane- then he’s making you deaf. I love vented, but radically so. He re- COTTER tary Solar Exploding that he was a sharp dresser, sort jected being black or white or Music, and founder of of kingly, sort of queenly, in faux American or even human. He ART REVIEW the Astro Intergalac- leopard-skin capes and miner’s opted for extraterrestrial and tic Infinity Arkestra, hats with lights. wore his otherness like a crown. is a hero of mine. I also admire him for tran- You’ll find evidence for all of To my ears he was not only a scending existential categories. this in “Pathways to Unknown genius composer, keyboardist He insisted he hadn’t been born, Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn & Chi- cago’s Afro-Futurist Under- ground, 1954-68,” a small, piquant exhibition of art, writing and ephemera related to his life at the Institute of Contemporary Art here. Although he kept the precise facts of his early life under wraps, documents show that he was beamed down to Birmingham, Ala., in 1914 as Herman Poole Blount, affectionately known as Sonny. In 1952 he changed his name to Le Sony’r Ra, Ra being the ancient Egyptian solar god. WILLIAM ZBAREN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Continued on Page 27 Inside Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn & Chicago’s B O O K S 3 1 ART IN REVIEW 29 Afro-Futurist Underground, 1954-68 Dwight Garner on A newly svelte A sketch by James Bryant for a “Vanished Smile,” an International Fine Art record cover is part of this show account of the most Fair takes up residence at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. spectacular art robbery in the Park Avenue UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LIBRARY of 1911. Armory. C M Y K Nxxx,2009-05-01,C,027,Bs-4C,E1 THE NEW YORK TIMES, FRIDAY, MAY 1, 2009 N C27 A Humble Fabric Takes Center Stage, for Once From Weekend Page 25 tracted people like me who don’t sew. Though I think that the closest I came to actually wearing felt was a yurtlike bathrobe with large red, cut-out and flocked tomatoes on its enormous pock- ets — a Christmas gift from my mother at the onset of my adolescence. During my first years as a New York pedestrian, I gained a new appreciation FRED R. CONRAD/THE NEW YORK TIMES of felt’s wondrous warmth and density through a simple pair of innersoles that winterized and then outlasted some reli- ONLINE: SLIDE SHOW able rain boots. Several of my favorite Additional images from “Fashioning garments have been made of boiled Felt” at the Cooper-Hewitt National wool, felt’s second cousin, including Design Museum: sweaters that I downsized (not always on purpose) in the washer or dryer. nytimes.com/design Then there’s my sizable collection of yard-sale afghans. Its pride is a blue- Felt has a history in postwar art, checked survivor of a previous owner’s starting with Josephs Beuys’s use of it washer-dryer experimentation. At first in his performances, abstract sculp- I thought it was a rug. I snapped it up tures and his dour felt suit pieces. And for $10 and hope to be buried with it. few things say Process Art like Robert And did I mention the felt-covered Morris’s elephantine, industrial- couch in my living room? It is seasonal, strength felt wall pieces and Barry used only during the cooler months. LeVa’s scattered floor pieces of felt The Cooper-Hewitt show dwells scraps, with or without shattered glass. largely in the gap between art and func- The less dour aesthetic possibilities of tional objects. Aside from room dividers felt hit me several years ago via an un- forgettable cluster of little felt reliefs hanging in a hallway of an art building at Virginia Commonwealth University No woof or warp, but a JAMES ESTRIN/THE NEW YORK TIMES in Richmond, Va. Nothing special, just long history predating Felt art now on display in Manhattan an assignment from a textiles class, but includes the multiheaded “Bold as the variety of color, textures and forms poodle skirts. seemed like a remarkably fresh way to Love,” above, by Adam Parker merge painting and sculpture. Wow. Smith, at Broadway Windows at Major in that. Broadway and East 10th Street; a At the moment, the New York galler- by Scofidio & Diller and Janice Arnold, a “Textile Stones” cushion, right, by ies showcasing felt include David Zwir- neat hanging cradle by Soren Ulrick Pe- Pernell Fagerlund; and an Uzbek ner, at 525 West 19th Street, where Adel tersen and a beautiful large rug in carpet, both at the Cooper-Hewitt Abdessemed has used expanses of bands of Rothko red by Stephanie Ode- National Design Museum.

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